Scott O’Hara

Satan’s Angel

Chapter One

Assignment From Hell

The Castle Club was a nighttime place. At night it was raw and loud and brazen, with the colored neon painting lurid highlights on the hoods of the big cars that nuzzled up to it. Bare shoulders and smoky music and false bottoms in the shot glasses. At night Sam Losser’s office was as strange as work gloves on a chorine. It could have been the office of a hick lawyer. Golden oak and worn green carpet and a spittoon.

But in the daytime when the Castle Club was gray and dingy, when the tables were stacked, when a man in a dirty shirt checked the bottles on the backbar, and a slow old man knelt in the dirty gray rain and picked slivers of glass out of the parking lot — in the daytime Sam Losser’s office became the only touch of reality.

He had a rolltop desk and an oak table at right angles to it. I sat on the other side of the oak table, my purse and gloves at my elbow. Sam’s chair creaked. He held a slender cigar in his fat, muddy fingers, and huffed out a blue-gray column of smoke. He wore a baggy gray suit that matched his office. His bald head had a high sheen in the gray light from the big window.

With a slow movement, he reached out, spun the cigar in the ash tray, leaving a small neat cone of ash over the red glow.

His eyes were milky gray, almost opaque. He smiled and said, “Now you make like a soap opera, Ellen. Big tears yet.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” I said flatly, pleased that I could keep the quaver out of my voice.

“The question? Oh, you wanted to know where Johnny is, didn’t you? If you did know, it wouldn’t do you any good. Your brother has got to stay put for a while, Ellen. Johnny James is a name the cops would like to know.”

“Aren’t you supposed to have the cops in your pocket?”

He sighed. “Machines I can fix. A few gas stations knocked off I can fix. Lots of little things I fix. Murder, no. Cops, they get eager about murder. So do all the kids in the D. A.’s office. I go to my people and say that to me it would be a personal favor if they let it slide. They say that I stay out of this one.”

“Johnny didn’t kill anybody,” I said with a note of hysteria.

“Ellen, you are a good girl. You do nice clean secretarial work. Maybe you look at that white paper and black writing too long. Life is not black and white. Life is full of shades of gray.

“What difference whether Johnny did it or not? Johnny is a very excitable boy. Johnny, he like a lot of dough in his pants. He likes nice things. You know how it is. Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t kill anybody this time. Maybe next time he does. He’s nervous.”

I thought of my brother. Johnny with his clear reckless eyes and twisted smile and the ready fists. Johnny, who had worked in some mysterious capacity for Sam Losser ever since the dishonorable discharge he got for beating up his company commander.

On April fourteenth, three nights before, at two in the morning, three men had broken into the Connor Brothers Coal Company, smashed the safe and made off with a little over twenty thousand dollars. The watchman had died the following noon in the hospital from a depressed skull fracture. I had thought nothing of it until I found that Johnny had disappeared. He hadn’t come back to his apartment. It was in the same building as mine. So I went to see Sam Losser.

“Did... those men rob the coal company because you told them to, Mr. Losser?”

He flattened his thick lips against his teeth as he smiled. His eyes were cold. “You got me wrong, Ellen. I got a tough business to run out here. I got to hire rough boys to help me. Sometimes, on their time off, those rough boys do a few things for excitement. Can I help that?”

“You won’t help Johnny?”

He inspected the end of his cigar and rolled the ash off again. “You make it difficult, Ellen. Maybe I can help him. I don’t know. If the pressure goes off the case, maybe I can help him a lot. If it stays on...” He shrugged.

“Maybe the two men who were with Johnny are worth less to you than he is. Maybe if one of them...”

He grinned, almost with delight. “Miss James, you got the same idea I got, but you got it in reverse. The two boys with Johnny are good boys. Steady boys. They been in the business years. Johnny, he’s still a punk. Like I told you, he’s excite-able. If the heat stays on I got to protect my investment by having them find Johnny. Just to make sure Johnny won’t talk, he might be dead when they find him.”

The room spun and I felt my shoulders sag. Through thick mist Sam Losser’s muddy face loomed and his faraway voice said, “You don’t feel so good?”

I clung to consciousness, fought away the mists. I lifted my chin and said, “I feel fine.”

He said softly, “You see, nobody was to get killed. Then it’s okay. But the deal went wrong. So what was a good job is now a bad job. I give it to you straight, Ellen. If they smell around too close to me, I got to throw Johnny to them. In Johnny’s pocket will be a lot of the dough and a sap that will fit the smashed place on the head of that watchman. Then the pressure is off.”

“Did Johnny kill him?”

“I told you before, that doesn’t make any difference.”

He leaned back in his chair. It creaked again. I saw the thin gray threads of smoke rising toward the ceiling. If I could get Johnny, we could go away together. This thing would have driven the madness out of him. A new start. Johnny would become the same fine kid brother he had once been.

I said softly, “Isn’t there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

He didn’t answer. He stared at the rain pelting against his window. I said, “Suppose Johnny was a very good man, very valuable to you, the same as the others. What would you do to take the heat off the three of them?”

He shrugged. “I might do a very dangerous thing. I might find some bum and have him killed and plant the stuff on him.”

“Why don’t you do that this time?”

“Johnny isn’t worth the danger, Ellen. You figure you got a bum and all of sudden he’s got friends who were with him the night he was supposed to be knocking off the watchman. Maybe somebody sees you contacting the bum. You got two murders instead of one.”

I remembered all the things about Johnny. He was a good kid. Somewhere along the line he had gotten twisted. He could be set right.

Sam squashed the butt of the cigar, handling it delicately with his thick fingers. He smiled up at me. “Of course, if you could find us a bum for the part...”

“Me?” I gasped.

“Sure. You get hold of some stew bum off River Street and take him to some room you get under the wrong name and pump him and make sure there won’t be a hitch. Then you let me know, and we arrange a pickup and wrap him up for the cops.”

I remembered the clear look Johnny used to have in his eyes. I remembered him, proud in his first long trousers. I remembered how his thin shoulders shook as I held him tight after our parents were killed at the grade crossing. I said:

“Suppose I do that. Then what?”

“Then you don’t have to worry about Johnny. He can come back to work.”

“But suppose I want to take him away from here? Suppose I think I can straighten him out?”

The rain was still pelting the windows, a shaft of sun shone between the clouds, a thin line of it making a bright spot on the green rug. Sam pointed to it. “You can straighten Johnny out the same way I can pick up that sunbeam and tie knots in it.”

“But you will let him go?”

Sam looked at me. He shrugged. “Phone me here when you got the burn lined up. Phone from a pay station.”

I stood up. He walked me to the door.

He laughed as he closed it. As I went along the narrow hall I could hear the distant sound of his laughter. I walked across the floor, out the side door and climbed into my coupe. The old man had finished picking up the shattered glass.

The rain had stopped and I clicked on the wipers long enough to dash the standing drops from the windshield. My foot was shaking so badly that I fed the gas raggedly, clashing the gears as I drove out of the lot...

From my apartment I phoned the office and told Mr. Hodges that I had seen the doctor and that he had ordered me to stay in bed for two days. Mr. Hodges was very pleasant about it. After I hung up, I went into the kitchenette, mixed myself a stiff drink and downed it. The warmth spread through me, but it didn’t touch the ice chips in my heart.

How do you dress to find a man to be killed? Where do you go? Sam had mentioned River Street. I glanced at my watch. Four in the afternoon. Time to get dressed for death, to find a room, to have just enough to drink so that I could be hard and cold.

I looked over my clothes and picked a skirt that had shrunk during drycleaning. It would fit too tightly. Mesh stockings. Heels that were too high for comfort. A blouse that was frilly and cheap.

I spent a long time over the makeup. In the back of the bureau drawer I found the lipstick that was too deep. With it, I enlarged my lips, smearing it on heavily. Blue eye shadow. Black smeared on my lashes so thick that it left little beads on the end of each eyelash. I put on dangling earrings.

In the back of my closet was a cheap fibre suitcase that I had bought in a Chicago drugstore when my luggage had been stolen. I filled it with underthings that I had meant to throw away, but had forgotten. Another cheap blouse. Junk jewelry.

At five I took the phone off the hook, locked the apartment and caught a taxi at the corner. The driver looked me over appreciatively and said, “Let’s make it a nice long ride, honey.”

“Corner of River and State,” I ordered.

The evening traffic was heavy. The driver was so busy trying to turn his head so that he could see my legs that twice we nearly piled into the back end of the car ahead.

River Street parallels the dock area. It is a street of small dives, missions, eroded hotels. State is the one decent street that cuts across it. It was heavy dusk when the driver let me out in front of the drugstore on the corner. I tipped him a quarter and he wanted me to have a beer with him. I walked off through the evening crowd, heading down River Street. I had to find a hotel where they weren’t too particular.

I found it in the third block. Hotel Barton. Lobby one flight up. Rooms from one dollar.

The dim stairway smelled of dust and disinfectant, disease and poverty, perfume and gin. The small lobby was brilliantly lighted. An old man with a stubbled face sat asleep in a worn leather chair, a frayed newspaper across his chest. A battered table held stacked religious tracts. The rug was worn down through the faded rose pile to the brown strings that held it together.

A very thin, very sallow young man leaned with sharp elbows on the old desk and watched me as I walked across from the head of the stairs. I lifted my chin, smiled at him and walked with an exaggerated sway.

He looked at me with unblinking dark eyes. His white shirt was damp under the armpits and his lean fingers were dirty across the knuckles.

“I want to rent a room,” I told him.

“Room with a shower. Buck seventy-five. In advance.”

I paid him. He opened a book in front of me, handed me a pencil and pointed to a vacant line with a dirty thumb. Lorene Vernon, I wrote.

He slapped a key on the counter. “One eleven, Lorene. Right through that arch over there and down the hall. Next to the last one on your right. Pay every day in advance.”

The key was fastened to a piece of greasy wood almost a foot long. I picked up the suitcase, walked down the hall.

I unlocked my door. The room was about ten by ten. One smeared window looked out across an airwell. There was a cheap maple bureau, chair, bed and bench. The lace curtains were torn and yellow with age. There was a strip of pale blue linoleum instead of a rug. The plaster walls were off-white.

One door opened into a shallow closet. The other opened into a tiny bathroom with stained plumbing, chipped fake tile and a naked overhead bulb. The only light in the bedroom was a bedside lamp in maple with a cardboard parchment shade with a silhouette of a ship in full sail. I sat on the bed and stared with unseeing eyes at the dusty floor beyond the strip of blue linoleum.

I sat in the room until after seven and then went out and ate in a small restaurant. I ate at the counter and realized that I was stalling over the food, dreading the actual moment when I’d have to begin my hunt for the nameless man who would, in the newspapers, become the man who had killed the old watchman at the coal company.

I was the pointing finger of death. The man I found would die. Outside the restaurant the coarse night life of the forty blocks along the river was beginning to roar. The juke boxes blared in the little joints.

After I paid the check, I walked out onto the sidewalk and headed down River Street. The three blocks near State were dotted with places that were large and noisy. I knew that I’d find my quarry in a quieter spot. Further along River the bright lights dimmed, the neon fizzed and crackled, the sidewalks were littered with filth.

Gradually I slowed my steps. Someplace here he would be, the lonesome man I would select for death.

There wasn’t much traffic on River Street. A junk wagon went slowly by, a man hunched on the high seat, the hooves of the swaybacked horse making a clop, clop sound. Across the street from me a harsh bulb illuminated a black and white sign which said, Jesus Saves!

I glanced into the smeared window of a small bar. Four men stood at the bar. They were fairly well dressed. The bartender wore a clean white jacket. I had to walk further down River.

I heard a woman scream and I looked up at the black dead windows over the darkened store fronts. A woman was screaming in the dark. So what? All over the world women screamed.

My heels made a slow rhythmic beat against the dark pavement. I couldn’t spend time worrying about a scream. I was worrying about death. I was an angel of death, and I walked the night streets of a great city looking for a man I would turn chill with my touch; looking for man-eyes that, because of me, would gaze sightless at the stars.

Chapter Two

Eeny Meeny Miney Moe

The soaped sign on a cracked window said, Bar whiskey — 1½ ounce shot — 14c. I went up the two stone steps, pushed the door open and walked into the place. It wasn’t a place where women go. I felt that at once. There was no music, no heat, little light.

Two dark men stood at the bar. One turned and stared at me with a soundless whistle. The bartender, a vast broken man with dirty white hair paused for a moment, then continued wiping a glass on a torn towel.

Beyond the bar were circular tables and broken chairs. The room was filled with a vast silence. The silence of a tomb in which the not-yet-dead were buried, where they waited patiently for the death that would come.

One of the tables was empty. I sat down and the men at the other tables looked vaguely at me and looked away.

The room stank of unwashed bodies. It was here that I would find my prey.

The bartender came from behind the bar, looked down at me over the bulk of his huge belly. “We don’t want no trouble.”

“Bring me a bottle of beer. I don’t want trouble. I just want beer.”

He sighed, turned away and came back with an opened bottle and a water-spotted glass. He set them on the table, showed no glimmer of interest as I gave him a quarter and said, “Thank you very much.”

The men sat motionless in the gloom. Hunched shoulders. Torn coats. Dirty bearded faces. Faces harrowed and lined and stained with what liquor had done to them. I knew that this was the last place they could sit inside, out of the cold spring wind; that when they no longer found the few cents to enable them to stay in this place, they would soon die. Some were old. And some were surprisingly young.

The angel of death sat among them. I wanted to giggle with hysteria. How shall I do it? Eeny meeny miney moe? Out goes Y — O - U! Let me do you a favor, boys. Who wants to die in a big way? Who wants to die with headlines? One at a time. Step up. Present your qualifications to the angel sans mercy.

The silent hunched shoulders. One of them made a hoarse sound in his throat and held his empty glass high. The bartender came over, stood silently until the man had counted out fourteen cents. Then he filled the glass from an unlabeled bottle.

The man looked down at the brim-full glass for long seconds. He snatched it suddenly, spilling a few drops, and set the empty glass down on the table again with a long, shuddering sigh. He bent over, fastened gray lips around the few spilled drops on the black wooden table and sucked them up noisily. He wiped his hand across his mouth and sat very still, his eyes closed.

As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I saw a younger man who was also alone at a table. He leaned back, his head against the wall, his mouth half open. He would have seemed asleep, but his eyes were half open and I had the feeling he watched me. I finished the beer, called the bartender over and said, “I want another beer. Serve it at that table over there.”

“He hasn’t got a dime in his pants, lady.”

“Serve it over there, please.”

He shrugged. When he moved away, I walked over to the other table. The young man’s face seemed curiously blurred, the features indistinct. The stubble on his face was pale and colorless. His eyes were pale blue.

The bartender brought my beer. I told him to bring whatever the man usually drank. He brought back a shot glass filled to the brim. His hand was oddly steady for so old and shattered a man. I paid him.

I reached out and took hold of the arm of the young man and shook him. His head lolled and he looked at me stupidly. He said dimly, “Gloria. Hello, Gloria.”

“I bought you a drink,” I said, enunciating every word.

He peered at me, then looked slowly down toward the table top. His eyes narrowed as he saw the drink. A thin gray hand crept up across the table, moved gingerly toward the glass like some large timid insect.

His fingers touched the smooth glass, stopped. Slowly he bent over until his mouth was inches from the rim. With both hands he lifted the precious glass, touched it to his lips and drank. When it was empty the glass clattered back onto the table top.

“Thanks, Gloria,” he mumbled. The voice came from a long way off. A distant voice. A dead voice.

“Can you walk?” I said, shaking him again.

He didn’t answer. Long seconds passed. “Where we going?” he asked weakly.

“Will you come with me?” I asked.

He looked at me then, his forehead wrinkled with the effort of trying to think clearly. “Taking me home, Gloria. Long time ago. Used to take me home. Before you died...”

“Stand up,” I said, standing myself and tugging at his arm.

He clawed at the wall, pushed at the table and managed to stand erect. He weaved heavily against me and I staggered under his weight. Together we went toward the front door. I risked a glance at the bartender. He was wiping a glass.

I bumped the door open with my shoulder. It had started to rain again.

He teetered on the top step, slipped out of my hands as I tried to grab him. He smashed against the wet sidewalk and was still. When I lifted his head I saw the blood was running from his mouth. Surprisingly, he seemed stronger. With one hand on my shoulder, he pulled himself up, lurched over against a wall, hitting it with force that drove the wind out of him. He gasped for a moment and then said, “Where we go, Gloria?”

“This way.”

Five long blocks to the Barton. Once he started coughing. I had to support him until the paroxysm was over. It sapped his strength and he leaned more heavily against me. The rain soaked into his clothes, releasing an ancient smell of cheap, wet cotton, soiled wool.

I guided him inside the lower hallway of the Barton and gave him a few minutes to catch his breath. The stairs were narrow and steep. Once, near the top, he swayed dangerously back, and it took every ounce of my strength to swing him forward again. He blundered up the last few steps and fell on his hands and knees. He stayed in that position until he felt me grasp his arm. I got him back on his feet.

The white young man behind the desk slapped my key down and looked with disgust at the man who stood behind me, swaying, his eyes almost shut.

I took the key, steered the man down the hallway, unlocked the door and pushed him in. He blundered over toward the bed, sat heavily on it as I slammed the door and locked it on the inside.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, staring down at the floor. His matted hair was wet with the rain. The water dripped from him.

Death would be a boon to this one. Death was coming to him very soon even if I hadn’t selected him.

The instructions from Sam were to find out what this clod had been doing at the time the murder was committed. In order to tell me anything, he’d have to be sobered up. He coughed again, and the deep, rasping convulsion shook him.

Suddenly I hated him. I walked over to him and hit him on the side of the face with all my strength. The blow knocked him back on the bed. He looked up at me and his eyes rolled. He squinted with the effort of trying to see me.

“Not Gloria,” he mumbled. “You’re not Gloria.”

There was dull heartbreak in his voice. I knelt and unlaced his shoes. Once they had been shoes. They were shapeless and dirty gray. They had the plupy feel of old newspaper. There was no lace in one of them. I pulled them off. He wore no socks. His ankles and feet were painfully thin, gray-white and dirty.

He half helped me as I pulled him up to a sitting position, wrestled his arms out of the torn tweed jacket, stained with age. Under the jacket he wore a cheap red sweater, no shirt.

I yanked the sweater up over his head. Every rib was visible. His skin was a muddy gray. He looked as forlorn as a plucked chicken. He shivered. I couldn’t think of him as a man. He was something that was hurt and dying.

His belt was too big for him and the buckle was broken. It was knotted tightly. I helped him with the knot, grasped his trouser legs and pulled them off. His shorts were gray and worn. His legs were like gray stalks. The muscles he had once had were like limp gray string. His eyes were vacant, his mouth half open.

I pulled hard on his wrist and he stood up, wavering. I togged him into the tiny bathroom, turned on the shower and pushed him under it. He shivered as the water hit him. I left him standing numbly under the shower and I went in, kicked his clothes into a corner and sat on the bed.

He fell heavily. When I ran in he was half in and half out of the shower. There was no waking him. I patted him dry with a towel and dragged him back into the bedroom.

After three tries I managed to get him up onto the bed. He was like lead. I guessed that once he had been a big man — before liquor had melted the flesh off of him. I covered him over. His breathing was heavy. His pulse was less than sixty. His hands were like ice.

His papers were in a cheap wallet in the left hip pocket of his trousers. Not many papers. Just the life record of a man about to die. A driver’s license that had expired. Eric Norstram. Born July 10, 1917. Six feet. 185 pounds. Address — 1820 Bellaire. Not a bad address. Not a good one. But not bad.

Social Security card. Taken out in 1937. Twenty when he had taken it out. A few soiled business cards. Imperial Valve Corporation, Detroit. Eric Norstram, Sales Representative. A cracked photograph. A small woman with a lean, vital face.

The cards were damp from the rain that had soaked us. I spread them out to dry on the bureau.

There was an extra blanket in the bottom drawer of the bureau. I made myself a hard bed on the floor and, after turning out the light, lay down fully dressed, my coat over me. Norstram’s heavy breathing filled the room. I remember thinking that it would be impossible for me to ever get to sleep, and the next moment the gray dawn outlined the window.

I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was stiff and sore. Norstram hadn’t moved. I felt his forehead. It was like flame. His lips were cracked and dry. His lungs rattled as he breathed.

After I came back from breakfast he had half regained consciousness, but he had no idea where he was. Fever had taken the place of alcohol. He mumbled endlessly about Gloria. I pulled the chair over to the bed and listened to him.

It wasn’t hard to piece the situation together. Gloria had been his wife. He drank too much. She threatened to leave him. He still didn’t straighten out. She left him.

He stopped drinking, drove over to Cleveland and got her. On the way back the car skidded into a telephone pole. Gloria was killed. He wasn’t even scratched. That was over a year ago. Two weeks later he had lost his job. He hadn’t been entirely sober since that moment.

A dozen times he relived the accident in the midst of delirium. Once he thought I was Gloria and in his efforts to protect me from the crash, he — made a wild swing and his bony wrist hit me under the ear, sweeping me off the chair. He yelled hoarsely and his eyes were wild. A girl in the next room hammered on the wall, yelling that she couldn’t sleep. I paid no attention to her.

At eleven I went back to my apartment, got more cash and a large box of sulpha left over from the time I had an ear infection. I propped him up and gave him the prescribed dosage. He gulped the water hungrily.

In the afternoon he slept. I went down the street to a drugstore and phoned Sam.

“Sam? This is the girl who talked to you yesterday.”

“Oh! What’s the report?”

“I’ve got what you — suggested. But I can’t deliver until maybe the day after tomorrow. I’ll let you know. Will it be okay?”

“It’ll be fine. When you’re ready, just let me know. The best deal will be about two in the morning. Take the item to a corner I’ll tell you when you phone again. We’ll arrange pickup. The item you got is — clean?”

“Absolutely. Nobody will ever miss it.”

“You’re a smart girl.”

“Thanks, Sam.” I hung up and back to the room.

Chapter Three

Dress Up for Death

Eric Norstram still snored. His forehead didn’t seem so hot. At dusk I went out and brought him back a bowl of soup. I turned on the lamp, set the soup on the table and shook him gently. “Eric! Eric!” I said.

“Uh? What you want?”

“Wake up, Eric.”

The light shone across his gray face. He opened blue startled eyes and looked up at me. A puzzled took crossed his face. “Who are you?” he asked weakly.

“Never mind that. Here. Sit up and drink this. If you’re too weak I’ll feed it to you.”

He squirmed into a half-sitting position. He still looked puzzled, but he reached for the spoon. I held the bowl while he spooned the soup into his mouth with a shaking hand. When it was gone he sank back with a grateful sigh.

“Cigarette?” he said weakly.

I lit one for him, handed it to him. He sucked hungrily at it. “Tastes funny,” he said.

“It should. You’ve been sick. Had a fever. You’re full of sulpha.”

“I feel hot.”

“The fever isn’t as bad as it was.”

The blue eyes fastened on me again. “Say, who are you?”

“Just a girl who care of you while you were the sickest.”

He looked around the room. “This your place?”

“It’s a room in the Barton on River Street.”

He looked at me with a funny expression. “Oh!”

“Maybe you’ve been sick for days without knowing it. Maybe you were sick as long ago as, say the fourteenth.”

“Fourteenth? Of what month?”

“This month.”

“Look, I got a vague idea this is 1948. Don’t pin me down to months.”

“Where do you live?”

He rubbed a shaking hand across the colorless stubble on his cheek. “Got me there, too. For a while I had a bed for two bits a night on Willis Street, but that seems like a long time ago. A guy let me sleep sometimes in the watchman’s cabin on a freight dock, but I don’t know whether that was before or after the flophouse. Where did you find me, sister?”

“On your face on the sidewalk.”

“That’s called the Norstram position, sister.”

“The name is Lorene Vernon.”

“Okay, Lorene. What’s the angle?”

“Does there have to be an angle?”

“Isn’t there always? I’m a bum, Lorene. I don’t kid myself about that. I haven’t got a dime. So why spend your time taking care of me?”

“Maybe I’d take care of any sick thing. A sick cat even.”

He looked at me for long seconds. “Hey, maybe you would. Maybe you would.”

“Gloria would have, wouldn’t she?”

He jumped as though I had stuck a pin in him. “What do you know about Gloria?” he asked hoarsely.

“Oh, you talked about her a lot. You’ve got the idea you killed her or something.”

“I did.”

I curled my lip as I looked at him. “If you want to be a lush, I suppose self pity is as good an excuse as any.”

I thought for a moment he was going to get angry. He sank back on the pillow. “I don’t fight with anybody,” he said softly. “Is there a drink in the house?”

“No.”

“Will you go get a bottle?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll go get one.”

“In the first place you’re pretty weak. In the second place I took your clothes out and stuffed them into a trash barrel.”

For the first time he smiled. “How nice of you!”

“Tomorrow I’ll buy you some more.”

“Thank you, Lady Bountiful.”

“Shut up!”

Lady Bountiful! Bountiful with death, my lad. Ashamed to send you off to be killed in your sad rags. She salves her conscience by buying you a new cheap suit and a new cheap shirt. Maybe she’ll spend a few minutes picking out a blue figured tie. Blue to match your eyes. A tie to die in, chump. A pretty tie to match your dead blue eyes.

I walked over to the window, stared across at the brick wall which grew more dim as the dusk became heavier. When I turned, he was on his back, staring up at the ceiling. When I spoke he wouldn’t answer. His mouth had an odd set look.

I paused at the door and said, “I’m going out to eat. The cigarettes are on the bureau. The shower I shoved you into last night only washed some of the dirt off. A scrubbing wouldn’t hurt you. I’m locking the door on the outside. I don’t know when I’ll be back.” I yanked the door shut, locked it, and stuffed the key with board attached into my big purse.

After I ate, I went back to my own apartment, put the phone back on the cradle, took a long hot bath, scrubbed the makeup off and drifted off into dreamless sleep.

In the morning, disguised again, I took a bus downtown, ordered a breakfast to go, and took it to Eric at the Barton. He was still sullen, but the shakes weren’t as bad. There was even a bit of color in his sallow cheeks under the beard.

“I’ll get you some clothes. Better give me the sizes — so they’ll fit,” I added.

Making allowances for the weight he had lost, he gave the sizes and I wrote them down on the back of an envelope.

Just as I left, he said, “Why are you doing this, Lorene?” He was propped up on one elbow, his expression earnest, his eyes on mine.

“How should I know? You were sick. Now you’re better. I’ll buy you some clothes. Maybe you’ll take me out tonight. Big date.”

I caught the puzzled look in his eyes as I pulled the door shut.

Twenty-two fifty for a gray suit. I gave them the inseam measurement and waited while they fixed the trousers. Thirty cents for socks. Five-fifty for shoes. One eighty-five for a white shirt. Sixty-five cents for a blue figured tie. A dollar for shorts, a dollar six for razor, blades and shaving cream. Ten cents for a comb.

Dress up for death, Eric. You want to look good on that slab. Maybe I was silly. I bought him a wallet for two dollars, spent another dime for a nail file and forty-five cents for a decent handkerchief.

Loaded down with bundles, I got back to the Barton at noon. He had moved from the bed over to the one chair. He sat with the cotton blanket wrapped around him, smoking and staring out the window. He turned quickly as I unlocked the door. I dumped the pile of bundles on the bed. I managed to give him a cheery smile. “Your wardrobe, sire.”

I saw a dull red flush under the colorless beard. “It’s money tossed into a hole in the ground, Lorene.”

“I can stand it.”

“I’m shot, Lorene. Inside and out. I’ve been sitting here thinking.”

“That’s the way people get into trouble. Thinking.” He could think and I couldn’t. If I stopped to think, I would see him dead. He would be dead soon.

“Pretty yourself up, Eric. I’ll be back to see you again in about an hour.”

I went to the drugstore and phoned Sam. “This is that girl again. Delivery okay tonight?”

A few seconds silence. “Yeah. Can do. Southwest corner of River and Gardener at two in the morning. It’ll help if the package is loaded. You know what I mean.”

“Yes I do. And what about — our friend?”

“He’ll be back in town by ten tomorrow morning.”

I hung up. I had no appetite for lunch. I walked through the gray warm day and everyone in the city, everyone in the world, was a stranger to me. I wondered how executioners feel the day before they must release the trap, pull the switch, swing the gleaming axe. Do they fasten a loose smirk on their lips and say to themselves, ‘We all got to die sometime?’

I walked with blind eyes and a heart that beat slowly. When I passed the places that made the air rank with the smell of greasy food, I tasted quick nausea in my throat. The timid angel. The faltering hand of death. Hold still, sir. This hurts me more than it does you. Hold still for death. Assume the angle.

But it was for Johnny. Bold Johnny with a laugh like a shining note of silver, eyes that are mad and wonderful. The kid brother. Take care of him, Ellen James. Take care of your brother. You are your brother’s keeper.

Eric Norstram turned from the bureau mirror as I walked into the room. His face was flushed with shame and pleasure. He stood awkwardly in his new clothes, with the weakness of one who has been ill. He looked as though he had recently been discharged from a hospital. His clean-shaven cheeks and jaw were sallow-white, his hair combed neatly. The suit hung on him in folds, but fit perfectly across the shoulders.

“You look wonderful, Eric!” I said. Fit for death, my love. Dressed to meet the fates.

“I’ve been staring into this mirror for fifteen minutes,” he admitted guiltily. “I’ve been wondering if it’s me. Inside me a voice keeps telling me that if I keep the suit pressed, I can put the bite on a lot of old friends for a few bucks. I keep telling the voice to shut up.”

“Are you being virtuous?” I asked scornfully. “Brother, in ten days those clothes will look like the ones I stuffed in the barrel.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re a pretty hard kid, aren’t you, Lorene?”

“I don’t kid myself.”

“Once a bum always a bum. Is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m hungry. Can you stand the fee for a steak?”

“For as many as you can eat, Eric.” Be nice to him, Ellen. The condemned man ate a hearty meal. Anyway, Eric, they won’t come in and shave your leg and the back of your head to make a good contact for the electrodes. You won’t know a thing about it.

He staggered from weakness as we turned into the small diner. For a moment he rested heavily against me, then took his hand away hurriedly and said, “I tripped.”

We sat at the counter. While I had coffee he had two orders of steak and french fries, apple pie and ice cream. He ate with steady determination, the muscles at the corner of his jaw bunching with each measured bite.

Over his coffee he said, “I was a pretty solid guy when I blacked out, Lorene. This morning I was looking at my legs. They look like I was half sparrow. I got a lot of weight to get back.”

I smiled. “Is that what you were doing? I thought you were laying a firm foundation for the next binge.”

For a moment he looked as though I had slapped him. “I can’t figure you, Lorene.”

“What is there to figure? If you want your head patted and if you want somebody to tell you that you can stop drinking, go to a clinic. I’m no reformer. I’m just setting you up for the next bout.”

He stared down into the dregs of his coffee. “You’re a funny one,” he said.

“I’m a scream,” I said.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked.

“Well, since I’ve put you back together, bit by bit, you can return the favor by being an agreeable escort for the rest of the day.”

He smiled ruefully. “I’ll need a nap in the middle of the afternoon.”

“Favor granted.”

“You know, Lorene, you don’t talk like—”

“Like a gal with a room at the Barton?”

“Something like that. I got the way I was when you — found me, because, well, life gave me a pretty rough deal. Something on the same line must have happened to you.”

I looked away. “Mr. Norstram, our delicate friendship is based on not getting involved in serious conversation. It makes my head hurt.”

I paid the check. He took my arm as we left. His hand was surprisingly strong and firm. Out on the sidewalk he yawned. “I’ve got to collapse for a time, Lorene.”

We went to the desk and I handed him the key. We moved away from the desk and he said, “You trust me, don’t you?”

“Why not? Go get your sleep.”

“What will you do?”

“How does that concern you?”

I watched him go through the arch, headed back to my room. I knew he was angry with me because the back of his neck was red. I made a mental note to give him the money for a haircut. But what did it matter? Is there any rule of procedure for hair length on a corpse?

I went to a cheap double feature. I didn’t know the names of the pictures when I walked in, and I still didn’t know them when I came out three hours and twenty minutes later.

Instead of the screen, I saw a car with Eric struggling in the back seat. Two men held him. I stood and watched the car drive away. The scene shifted. A prowl car stood, engine running, by a deserted lot. The spotlight shone on a body. A cop kneeling by the body said loudly, “A roll of bills and a sap. He was shot in the head. Call Homicide.”

I knocked on the door. The key grated in the lock and Eric opened it. His eyes were puffed with sleep. He looked cross and upset.

He reached out, caught my wrist and pulled me toward him. Through tight lips he said, “What the hell are you doing in a setup like this?”

I yanked my hand away. “Is that your business?”

“Can’t I make it my business?”

“You’re a lush. You can’t stop thinking about liquor long enough to have any other business.”

His shoulders sagged. “Okay, okay. I’m wearing the clothes you bought. You’re the boss.”

“Let’s go. I need a drink.”

He pulled on his suit coat and I looked the door behind us.

Chapter Four

Delivered — One Corpse

We walked over to State and went into a cocktail lounge, sat at a small circular red leather booth in a corner. Mirrors on the walls disguised the essential cheapness of the place. I glanced at Eric. He was very pale. He held onto the edge of the table so tightly that his knuckles were as white as the napkins.

“Martini for me,” I said. “What do you want, Eric?”

“Ginger ale,” he said in a hoarse voice.

The waiter went away. “Virtuous, aren’t you?” I said.

“A drink would — upset me,” he said carefully.

I laughed. “That’s a good word for it.”

When the drinks came, I took a sip of mine, shoved it over toward him. “Eric, I think they use cheap gin in their Martinis. Take a sip and see what you think.”

His hand flashed out and he grasped the stem of the glass. He half lifted it and then set it down again. I could see that every nerve end in him was screaming for the warm embrace of alcohol. Slowly he loosened his fingers. “I couldn’t tell.”

Slowly I drank the rest of it. His eyes stayed on the glass until the last drop of amber fluid was gone. He swallowed thickly.

“Damn you,” he whispered. “Damn you! You know what you’re doing!”

“Doing? Me?” I asked with mock surprise. “What on earth would I be doing?”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said hoarsely.

I gave him a ten. He paid the check and, when he tried to give me the change, I told him to hold onto it.

I made him take me to two more cocktail places. Each time, as I drank, perspiration put a sheen on his high, pale forehead, on his upper lip. His pale blue eyes were haunted. I began to worry for fear that by the time two o’clock came around, be would still be stone sober, Sam wouldn’t care for that.

I was too nervous to eat very much. He had a heavy meal, seeming to gain strength from it.

“Now what?” he asked when we had finished. I glanced at my watch. Eight thirty. Five and a half hours to go.

“Your choice,” I said, trying to smile.

“We’ll walk.”

Down River to State. Down State to the docks. Over the waterfront alley between the docks and the warehouses. One long pier was empty.

“Let’s go out there,” he said.

Our heels made hollow sounds on the big planks of the dock after we got beyond the concrete. The river ripples made lapping sounds against the piling. The wind off the river was cool and moist. Far out in the channel two barges towed by a tug were going up the river. Their running lights had red and green halos formed by the mist.

“You’re quiet,” I said. I spoke too loudly.

He started. “Guess I am. A lot to think about, Lorene. A hell of a lot. When you go a long time without thinking, there’s a lot to catch up on.”

It’s not fair, I thought. It’s not fair. You are not supposed to think. You have been a symbol. You have been something I rescued from one death in order to give you to another.

I shivered. “Cold! Let’s walk some more.”

Something in the night had given him strength. He walked with his chin up, his hand firm on my arm. His strides were long and he seemed unconscious of my difficulty in keeping up with him.

When we passed a street light I looked at my watch. A few minutes after ten. I stopped. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“A girl can only walk so far. One more block and you’d be carrying me.”

“I feel strong enough to do that, too.”

“Me for a drink.”

He hesitated. “A movie maybe?”

“A drink, pardner. Foot on the rail stuff.”

We were three blocks from River. I led the way and he followed along meekly. The place looked all right. Pickled pine. Shining brass. I led the way back to a rustic booth in a darkened corner.

The waiter came over. “Ginger ale for me,” Eric said. “How about you, Lorene?”

I knew what I had to do. “Straight rye. Water chaser.” I had never tried to drink straight liquor in my life. I knew I was right by the look in Eric’s eyes when I placed the order.

The waiter brought it, along with the check.

Eric looked at the shining shot glass as he sipped his ginger ale. I didn’t look at him. Slowly I pushed the shot glass over to him. “You better take this too, Eric. It’ll do you good.”

My hands were resting on the edge of the table. His thin hands slipped across the table. He grabbed my wrists so tightly that he hurt me. He looked into my face. He was white and his eyes were like the blue flame that plays over hot coals.

He spoke through clenched teeth. “Funny aren’t you? Funny like a new boil.”

“You’re hurting my wrists!”

He didn’t hear me. “Why are you doing this to me? Why?”

I lifted my chin. “Because you can’t take it.”

His fingers relaxed on my wrists. He picked up the shot glass with a steady hand. He lifted it to his lips, sipped. His eyes had a strange look. He held the sip of rye in his mouth, deliberately took out the handkerchief I had bought him and spat the sip of rye into it.

He took my wrists again, and his touch was gentle. “Lorene, we despise what we are. Both of us. Please, Lorene, listen to me. We hate what we are. This is a way out for us. For the two of us. You just saw how strong I can be when I’m with you. You’re the only chance I’ve got, Lorene. Please. I can get a job selling. You wouldn’t know it right now, but I’m a good salesman. People like me. I can get a job. Let’s get out of this crummy town together. The two of us.”

His face had lost that blurred, indistinct look. The loose lines around his mouth had firmed.

“Darling, life has done something foul to both of us. I want to marry you.”

How is it, Ellen, to sit across the table from death, and death has warm fingers on your wrists, death has a look of life in its eyes that will soon be shut forever? This thing you have created, this body that you have given life and hope.

I looked into his eyes and I was suddenly horribly tired. There was no thought behind my words. “You have no right to talk like this.”

“I know I haven’t,” he said humbly.

“You don’t even know what I mean! You don’t even know what I mean!”

Suddenly my voice was shrill and the tears were running down my cheeks. The tangled, fumbling words came out. Slowly as he made sense out of them, the look went out of his eyes; they went blank and dead. They became the eyes that I had seen when he picked himself up, bleeding, from the sidewalk.

He let go of my wrists and leaned back. “Lorene isn’t your name, then?”

“My name is Ellen James. I work as a secretary.” The tears were suddenly gone and all emotion was drained out of me. We were strangers again.

“And you were supposed to turn me over to these people so they won’t make a fall guy out of your brother. They would have killed me instead of him?”

“Yes.”

His smile wasn’t a good thing to look at. “You were doing so beautifully up until now, Miss James. Why did you suddenly decide to tell the truth?”

“I don’t know.”

“When I made my silly offer a few minutes ago, I thought I was making it to Lorene Vernon who has a room in the Barton. Instead I was making it to the very proper Miss James. The homicidal Miss James.”

“Don’t,” I said weakly.

“Relax, Miss James. We’ll call it a temporary lack of balance on my part. Where was this two o’clock transfer supposed to take place?”

“Southwest corner of River and Gardener.”

“What kind of a kid is this brother of yours?”

“He was a good kid, Eric. Really a good kid. Something just went wrong with him somehow. I don’t know where or when. He’s — twisted inside now. He frightens me.”

He said gently, “You must love him a great deal to do — this sort of thing for him.”

“Love him? I don’t know. I love what he used to be. I hate what he is.”

“Suppose somebody who knows my name saw us together?”

“I was going to take that chance. It would be okay, if it helped Johnny.”

His lips curled. “You shouldn’t have told me, you know.”

“I had to.”

“You didn’t figure all the angles, Miss James. I’m no longer your pigeon, and while you’re getting another fall guy, I’ll be back up to here in rye.”

“Then everything you said was an act too, Eric. All that guff about me being the only one to help you. I’ve straightened you out for a long time, haven’t I?... Good-by, Eric. Happy dreams.”

Before he could stop me, I picked up my purse and hurried out. It was raining again. The rain mingled with the tears that came. I knew no reason why there should be tears. I ran until my heart pounded and a great pain came in my side. Gasping, I went into a cigar store and shut myself in the phone booth.

“Sam? This is that girl again.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The delivery got fouled up, Sam.”

Long seconds. Heavy sigh. “I can’t stop the boys from showing. It’s after eleven now. They’ll be there on schedule. Unless you can find somebody else in the meantime, show up yourself and tell them it’s off.”

“Okay, Sam.”

I hung up, bought cigarettes at the counter.

I tried, Johnny. I’ll do it yet, Johnny. With somebody else. Somebody who is... further gone. Somebody without blue eyes and strong fingers and that look of hope and pleading. Maybe, in my shoes, Johnny, you couldn’t have done it either. I hope not.

Two o’clock. Lagging feet took me to the corner. The wind had come up. Rain whipped around the brutal stone shoulders of the gray buildings. The windows were blank black sockets where eyes had once been. The night life of River Street that had been a solid brassy blare at midnight was beginning to fade. The city gagged, coughed and seemed to change position in its sleep.

In an alley a girl cried, flatly, tonelessly. A bottle smashed against the bricks. A man stood with his cheek against the wet cold metal of the street sign.

I crossed over to the southwest corner. A man stood in the shadows. I stood and felt that he watched me. There was something familiar about his stance.

Three steps closer. “Eric! What do you want here?”

Tired voice. “That was the arrangement, wasn’t it? Never let it be said that Norstram fouled up a lady in distress.”

“But you can’t!”

“Can’t what? I’m not being a tragic figger, honey. This is just a nice clean way to do it. This way, maybe I accomplish something.”

I grabbed his wet coat, pulled at him. “Get away from here, Eric! Get away! You’ve been drinking.”

He laughed tonelessly. “That’s where you’re wrong, honey. Very wrong. I haven’t had a drink.”

A big car came down the street at a fast rate. The shocks smacked against the frame as it hit the potholes in the street. It slid smoothly up to the curb.

“Ah, my taxi,” Eric said. “A short ride to the Styx.”

He stepped toward the door that swung open. I grabbed his arm, pulled hard, held tightly in spite of his efforts to free himself.

A man got out of the ear, came quickly across the sidewalk.

“What the hell goes on?”

“Johnny!” I gasped.

“Sam told me you got me a pigeon.” Johnny stood in a half crouch. “Nice work, Sis. Come on, you.”

“Don’t take him, Johnny! Don’t take him!” I pleaded. “He’s not the one.”

“You’re quite a joker, Sis,” he said, showing white teeth. He yanked my hands off Eric’s sleeve, shoved Eric roughly toward the car. He put a hand against my shoulder, pushed me away violently and said, “You’re all through with this deal, Sis. Keep your nose out. Thanks for the pigeon. And I’m not coming back. I got a big arrangement on the Coast with Sammy.”

Eric turned in time to see me nearly fall from Johnny’s rough push. He said, “Hey, what do—”

Johnny cursed and hit him heavily in the mouth. The quick blood showed black in the faint light of the streetlamp. As Eric sagged, Johnny tumbled him into the back seat of the car. The door slammed, the motor raced and the sedan roared off.

I turned and ran. I sobbed aloud as I ran. The light of the drugstore was incredibly distant. As I ran it seemed to recede from me.

I managed to get a nickle out of my purse, dialed the operator.

She connected me quickly. “Police Headquarters, Sergeant Gray.”

“Emergency. A black Pontiac sedan, license Y 8463, kidnapped a man named Eric Norstram three minutes ago on the corner of River and Gardener. They headed north on Gardener. They’re going to kill Norstram.”

With infuriating slowness, he made me repeat the license. He cut me off for a few moments, came back on the line. “Okay, we got it on the radio. If you’re right on the time, they won’t make it out of town. Now, who was in the car?”

“I recognized one man. John James. He works for Sam Losser who owns the Castle Club on Route 34. John James was one of the three who robbed Connor Coal.”

Sergeant Gray whistled. “You sure?”

“Sam Losser told me.”

“We better come and get you and bring you in here. You may be a little unpopular. Who are you?”

“Ellen James. John is my brother.”

“Where do we find you?”

I gave him the address. I hung up slowly. My hands were cold with perspiration. During the few moments I had before the white sedan pulled up in front, I scrubbed off most of the heavy makeup.

I sat alone in the back seat. The thick shoulders of the two men in uniform were like a wall of blue stone.

A dim impression of a large room, white tile, golden oak, cigar smoke. Sergeant Gray had a kind, florid face.

“Better sit down, Miss James.”

“Did... did...?”

“Yes. Got them at the bridge near Anderson Avenue. There was stuff from the coal company safe in the car. They’re coming in now. The others. Not your brother. He tried to run for it...”

There was a sharp smell in my nose and I fought feebly to push away the hand that held the sharp smell so close to me. “Take it easy,” a voice said gently.

I opened my eyes and looked into Gray’s face. My voice sounded far away. “Where is... Eric?”

Gray grinned and winked at somebody beyond me. He said, “Lady, that ain’t exactly a sofa cushion you got your head on.”

Content

Scott O’Hara
Satan’s Angel

Chapter One Assignment From Hell

Chapter Two Eeny Meeny Miney Moe

Chapter Three Dress Up for Death

Chapter Four Delivered — One Corpse